“She’s no tramp,” I called to his retreating back. “And you tell April or I’ll do it for you.”
He never looked around, just got into his truck and drove off with a great spray of dirt.
I guess I must have given an involuntary sigh because Daddy reached out and patted my hand.
“Don’t let him get under your skin, shug. He’s got to huff and blow about it awhile, but he’ll come ‘round. Don’t forget, he did try’n do the right thing back then.” He cut his eyes at me. “Just the way you did with Allen Stancil.”
Like Carol for Andrew, Allen Stancil was a part of my past I’d just as soon not talk about and certainly not with Daddy, so we sat silently for a few minutes, sipping our iced tea and watching a pair of wood ducks dabbling out on the pond. It’s still pretty peaceful here. Without the occasional beep-beep-beep that drifts in on the wind during the workweek as dump trucks back and haul, one could almost forget the pile of houses that are being built across the creek a half mile away. On this quiet Saturday afternoon, all we could hear at the moment were birdsongs and the hum of insects.
“I reckon Sue told you a lot of things there towards the end,” Daddy said finally.
I nodded.
“Things you still ain’t talked about?”
“A few.”
“I won’t much use to her there for a while, was I? To you, neither, the way I put it all on you like that.”
No denying that it had been hard. I was the only child still at home that summer. The boys were all busy building careers or getting their crops in, getting married, getting divorced, getting babies. And Daddy was gone half the time, too. All of them were unnerved by her dying and the intensity of her need to talk. Daddy was hurting so bad and in such deep denial that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—listen until it was almost too late.
“She understood,” I said, taking his big, work-roughened farmer’s hand between my own. “You were there when she needed you the most. And she knew that you would be. She told me so.”
He squeezed my hand tight, then pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “Durn ragweed,” he muttered, as if I didn’t know that he’s never been allergic to any plant. “I believe I could drink another glass of that tea if you’re offering it.”
As I refilled his glass, he said, “Tell me about Olivia. Or Tallahassee, I reckon I ought to say.”
So I told him as much as I knew, omitting the circumstances of Braz’s conception and the fact that Tally’s first marriage had been in name only. And yes, I sort of glossed over Braz’s record so that it didn’t sound too much worse than Reese’s and A.K.’s. Or Andrew’s and Will’s.
Or his, either, for that matter.
“A lot of people look down on carnival people, think they aren’t much good,” I said, “but—”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Like that Cher song.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t you remember? Your mama used to like it. I learned how to play it for her to sing. ‘Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.’ That was the name of it.”
He hummed the chorus, his fingers tapping out the rhythm on the glass tabletop, and for a moment, I could hear Mother’s throaty voice as she sang the line about the hypocritical men who hurled insults at the carnival folks and then came around every night eager to buy tickets for the kootch show.
“I don’t know if Tally ever did any dirty dancing,” I said, “and I’m sure there’s a lot she’s not telling me, but for somebody who had to bring herself up, looks to me like she’s done a pretty decent job of it.”
“What’s her other boy like?”
“Val? He’s about fifteen or sixteen, same build, same coloring as all your other grandsons. Prideful,” I said, remembering his outburst to me last night. “Mindful of his parents, I think. But I only spoke to him briefly.”
He listened to the silence behind my words and nodded. “When does she want to do it?”
“She doesn’t know. When I left, Chapel Hill still hadn’t called her. And that reminds me. I need to call Duck Aldcroft. He’s going to handle things for her.”
“Good.” He stood and reached for his hat. “I’ll go along then. Maidie says you’re coming for supper?”
“If you’ll have me.”
“Always room for another pair of legs under my table, shug. You know that.”
CHAPTER 8
TALLAHASSEE AMES
SUNDAY MORNING
Tally Ames awoke a little after six Sunday morning. Even though she was still tired, she was so wide-awake that she knew she’d bother Arnie if she stayed in bed. Carnies can sleep through blaring loudspeakers, the clatter of roller coasters, noisy crowds—anything except a restless bunkmate, and he’d worked hard till after midnight. She eased out of bed, slipped on her clothes, and tiptoed out for life-restoring coffee and cigarettes.
At the other end of the trailer, Val’s door was still shut, of course. He wouldn’t roll out till much before noon, either. Braz’s murder had made yesterday doubly rough on the two of them.
Braz had been a pain in the butt all summer: undependable, moody, and quicker than usual to feel sorry for himself. She kept threatening to kick him off the lot and Arnie, always more easygoing, kept giving him one more chance.
“He’s a pair of hands that can take tickets, make change, help us make our nut,” he kept reminding her, and yesterday only underscored the loss.
She herself had been absolutely useless. Short two more people, Arn and Val had scrambled to redistribute the tasks and take up the slack when they were already strained to keep all the spots covered. Worse, with police officers all over the place, one of their mechanic’s helpers had taken off, not wanting to be where there was any possibility of someone running his fingerprints.
Tally had no idea what his trouble with the law in south Georgia was and didn’t really give a damn long as he helped Raggs keep the rides going. Besides, half the people on the midway had things in their past they’d just as soon didn’t get dug up again. Too, you never knew what law officers might notice about the games themselves, gaffs that might get their stores shut down, so everybody was on edge even without all those questions about who saw what and who Braz might’ve pissed off.
Take a number, Tally thought wearily.
The coffeemaker finished doing its thing, and she stubbed out her cigarette, filled a large mug, and stepped outside into the cool September morning. The sun was just coming up, a rare sight for her. Also rare was the quality of the air, fresh and clean, blown free of the smells of carnival foods. Most days, by the time she reached the midway to open up the Guesser, the fry vats were already bubbling with hot grease, the cotton candy makers were going full tilt, and spicy sausages were sizzling on the grill—smells so familiar and pervasive that she never noticed them until they were no longer there. Like now. Here at sunrise, it was only the smell of dew rising from the grass and dirt beneath her feet. No music either, just the sound of birds twittering in the tall oaks that ringed the Agricultural Hall and an occasional car passing beyond the fences.
Carrying her oversized coffee mug and sipping as she walked, she passed the trailers of sleeping friends and employees. No one stirred or called her name, and she was glad to have this time alone. They had rallied ‘round last night after closing, and she was grateful for their sympathy, but she wasn’t ready for more speculation as to who could have killed Braz or why, or unasked questions about her connections here. Polly was the only one besides Arn and the boys that she’d actually told about being born in this county, but several of them knew about the farm and had heard that she was related to the judge who tried those guys with the knife. Since Polly wasn’t one to chatter, Tally put it down to Braz running his mouth to Skee Matusik, who could never keep his mouth shut, either.
Whereas Val wanted nothing to do with a North Carolina family that had ignored her existence almost from the beginning, Braz had been scheming how to exploit the relationship ever since she told them that the judge in
their vandalism case was actually her father’s sister. Sooner or later, Braz would have made one of the Knotts aware of who he was, despite her expressed desire to remain anonymous and unrecognized.
Not that It mattered anymore. Not now that Deborah knew who she was. Not when she’d be meeting her grandfather and God knows who else day after tomorrow. When she telephoned Duck Aldcroft at the funeral home yesterday, he’d told her that the medical examiner would be releasing Braz’s body either today or tomorrow, so they could hold the funeral Tuesday morning if that’s what she wanted.
“Tuesday will be fine,” she’d said.
“Ten o’clock?”
“Ten o’clock. About the cost, Mr. Aldcroft. I hope you won’t mind an out-of-state check?”
“You don’t need to worry about that, Mrs. Ames. Mr. Knott’s already taken care of everything. All we need you to do is come over sometime before Tuesday and select the casket.”
She had protested in sudden anger, but the funeral director had been gently adamant. “I’m sorry if this is a problem, Mrs. Ames, but Mr. Knott is an old and valued customer and he’s already paid me. You’ll have to discuss it with him.”
“Which Mr. Knott?” she’d asked, abruptly remembering that Andrew was hardly alone in possessing that name in this county.
“Mr. Kezzie Knott,” he’d answered.
“Oh,” she’d said, confused by such conflicting emotions.
If Andrew wanted to pay for the funeral, it could mean he accepted that she was his daughter. Unless, she thought angrily, it meant he thought he could make up for a lifetime of denial with a one-time check. But that it was her grandfather...? Well, Deborah did say he’d tried to find her for years.
As she slipped between Polly’s Plate Pitch and the Rope Climb to get onto the midway, Tally realized that she was smiling at the thought of having a moonshiner and a bootlegger for a grandfather. Over the years, passing through Dobbs on the way to gigs further north, she’d always made Arn stop here. While he loaded up on cheap cigarettes for bribing ride jockeys and greasing Yankee palms, she would spend the afternoon in the courthouse. Once she discovered that the library directly across the street also housed genealogical data, she started dropping in there first. The Colleton County Heritage Center on the second floor was just full of goodies. Its staff of volunteer genealogists seemed maniacally dedicated to documenting everything from obituaries and gravestones (which is how she learned that Susan Knott had died years earlier) to clipping news articles and filing them in folders that were open to anyone who wandered in.
A catchall Knott family folder was like dipping into a family scrapbook. Any time any Knott made the newspapers, someone had filed the article. Here was where she’d read about her stepmother (“April Knott Named Colleton Teacher of the Year”), her uncles (“Knott Brothers Pool Labor and Equipment to Control Rising Farm Expenses”), and her cousins and half siblings (“Cotton Grove Man Has Truck Damaged by Deer” and “Area Youths Charged with Vandalism”). Judge Deborah Knott had recently acquired a folder of her own with clippings about her career.
Finding a folder for Keziah “Kezzie” Knott had interested her the most, though. It held yellowed clippings that went back to his arrest, trial, and eighteen-month incarceration for income tax evasion forty-five or fifty years ago. It didn’t take much reading between the “alleged” and “rumored” lines to understand that this was the only way the Feds could get at a man everyone knew controlled the making and selling of illegal whiskey in the area. The crossroads gas and grocery store he’d bankrolled had been the equivalent of a game so slickly gaffed that nothing could be pinned on the agent. The later expunging of his record was just butter on the popcorn.
Ever since she’d read that, Tally had wished she could have known him while she was growing up instead of Grandpa Hatcher. Unless Kezzie Knott was a huge hypocrite, he wouldn’t have cursed her birth or scorned her for the life she’d made for herself.
Directly across from Polly’s was the Dozer. The flaps of the red-and-white tent had been tied down, and now she carefully set her coffee mug out of the way to untie the flaps and fold them back on both sides till the Dozer was open to the midway on both sides again. She unlocked the sides of the wagon itself and snapped out the hinges that held them up and away so that customers could get to the stations. Then she retrieved her coffee and stepped up into the well of the wagon.
The police had removed their yellow tape late yesterday afternoon, and she knew that Arnie had seen to having the floor scrubbed clean by one of the townies they’d hired on for the week. Today the Dozer would go back into operation.
“You sure you want to do this?” Arnie had asked her when she said she’d work it.
He thought she wouldn’t want to stand in the spot where Braz had been killed, but she certainly didn’t feel up to working the Guesser. Talking trash to the crowds as they streamed onto the lot? No way. Anyhow, the Dozer took less concentration than any of their other stores, which is why they’d put Braz on it. All you had to do was make change and occasionally explain which game pieces could be exchanged for which prizes. Besides, it was always too much temptation to green clerks. All those shiny quarters tumbling off the side spills into the baskets? For her to lay out another day would mean a serious financial drain.
Now she stood where her firstborn had died and drank a long steadying drink of her coffee. She was neither superstitious nor religious nor even particularly sentimental, but if anything remained of Braz, surely it would be here?
Incoherent thoughts crowded through her head. Images of Braz the first time they’d put him in her arms all red and screaming with colic that had gone on and on and on for what seemed like four solid months without a break. Braz as a toddler underfoot in Hartley’s grab wagon, curled up under the counter for an afternoon nap while she tried to be careful that no hot grease splattered on him. Braz at six hysterical with rage because she wouldn’t let him come on her honeymoon with Arnie. They were only gone two nights and he adored Irene Matusik, who babysat him and spoiled him rotten, but he’d never gotten over that sense of abandonment and hurt. She had spent the next two years trying to convince him that he was still loved and valued, but when Val was born—Val, whose sunny disposition and easy ways endeared him to everyone—it was like a huge empty hole had opened up inside of her first son and there wasn’t enough love in the world to fill it.
A low stool stood next to the end wall, and she sat down on it and rested her throbbing head against the cool metal ledge. Here in the morning dimness of the Dozer well, her eyes filled as she thought about his life.
“I’m sorry, Braz,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
And even as her heart ached for his loss, she knew that part of her grief was guilt because Braz had been right.
“Tally? You okay?”
She opened her eyes, disoriented for the moment, then realized Dennis Koffer was peering in at her over the swinging flap. The show’s patch wore a ball cap with “East Bay Raceway” stitched across the front and his usual cigar poking out the side of his mouth beneath his neat gray moustache.
“Yeah, Dennis. Thanks.” She fumbled in the pocket of her shorts for a tissue and blew her nose.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. What are you doing up so early?”
“Just getting my ducks in a row about today. You opening the Dozer?”
She nodded.
“You do remember that we’re a Sunday schooler this evening, right?”
“Oh, God, I’d forgotten.”
“You might want to narrow the side spills a little and add more prize chips, okay?”
“Okay.”
Sundays in the South were usually big-dollar days, and today would be no exception, especially since the Fall Festival Committee had decreed that tonight would be church night. This meant everything had to be squeaky clean so that Sunday school classes and youth groups, their parents and chaperons, could come out to the carnival, enjoy the lights and the
rides, buy fried candy bars and chili dogs, and play for charity without being led into temptation. They would have money in their pockets, too, because many of the groups would come to “play for Christ” and to donate their prizes to toy drives for underprivileged children.
All evening, gospel and Christian rock would blare from the speakers strung through the lot, totally indistinguishable from soul and secular rock unless you listened carefully to the words.
For hanky-panks, it would be just another evening, but the gaffed games would have to be played fairly straight, which meant stashing the expensive plush and electronics that no one was ever allowed to win and scrambling to restock their stores with “slum,” cheap prizes that wholesaled at less than it cost to play the game. The alibi agents and flatties always griped when required to turn the midway into a Sunday schooler, but it was good public relations. Made the town fathers look On you a little kinder.
The patch smiled at her. “And you’ll remind Val no tricks with the Spot?”
Against her will, Tally had to smile back. “Now, Dennis, what are you suggesting?”
“Just be sure he loses the gaffed set tonight, okay?”
“Okay.”
If the flat metal disks were less than a certain proportion to the red spot, it would become impossible to cover every bit of the red. If a sharpie stepped up too confidently to the counter and Val was getting close to having thrown twenty-five percent of his plush already, he would palm the regulation-sized disks and slip the mark a set of microscopically smaller ones.
All in a day’s work.
As Dennis moved on, Tally finished her coffee and looked around, seeing what Braz would have seen on Friday night.
Arnie had laid out the midway. Since this was their first time playing Dobbs, they didn’t really know how big the crowd would be—festival committees were notorious for lying about average attendance—and he’d deliberately kept it on the narrow side so that people would have to brush up against the stores. Nothing was worse than a wide midway and sparse crowds. When that happened, the marks hewed to the middle of the walkways and resisted the impulse to lay their money down.
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